Dead meat box set vol 3.., p.13
Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 3 | Days 7-9, page 13
part #3 of Dead Meat Box Set, Vol. 3 Series
“We’re not leaving without that rifle,” Chris says. “It’s our ticket out of here.”
Iver shakes his head. “I’m not doing it.”
Chris’s expression changes slightly. It grows darker. “Then you understand you leave me no choice, right? If we can’t make a deal, I’ll just have to take the rifle from you.” He steps closer.
“Stay back!” Iver says, his voice breaking. His back hits the wall next to the door.
Chris doesn’t stay back. In fact, he’s about to lunge at Iver.
Then a big, broad figure steps in through the doorway. “What’s going on here?” Leif asks in a groggy voice, peering around at them with narrow eyes. “What’s all the commotion about? Hey, how did you get my car in here?” Leif sees the rifle in Iver’s hands. “And what the heck are you doing, Iver?”
Chris hesitates.
So does Iver.
None of them knows what to do or say.
Linda does. “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” she says and steps over to the wall and presses a button.
A metallic rattling as the garage door begins lifting.
“No, no!” Chris cries out. “What the hell are you doing?”
“You guys figure things out,” Linda says as she slips in behind the wheel. “I’m done talking.”
She slams the door and the engine roars to life. The garage door is halfway open by now, revealing a forest of legs, the most eager of the zombies already crouching down to duck under it.
Linda revs up the engine and guns it, the car lurching forward, tires screeching as she blasts into the rows of undeads, plowing through them, dead bodies flying off to the sides, the roof of the car scraping against the garage door.
“Fucking bitch!” Chris bellows after the car as it leaves a trail of busted-up zombies behind. The ones not getting hit are entering the garage, reaching out eagerly for the three of them all just standing there.
Iver can’t move. He’s stunned with horror. All he can do is stare as death comes waddling right at him …
THIRTY-ONE
Dennis watches the sun go down, fondles the gris-gris and tries to imagine he’s back home and that everything is normal.
Sitting in the upstairs room of Holger’s house, he can almost fool himself. There are no dead people visible from up here. No one pointing guns at each other.
Yet he can hardly recall what “normal” feels like. For the past week, nothing about the world has been normal. And Dennis doubts it will ever be so again. Everything has been tainted by something new and crazy.
Like the gris-gris. Just touching it reminds him of how he risked his life getting it back.
Or this very room he’s sitting in. It was the room that he and Mom carried Holger’s body to, so that Dennis could push him out of the window.
He glances down at the windowsill. Next to the gun he sees the brownish stain. Holger’s blood.
He looks back out and sees Silas and Jonas’s truck. It’s still there, a few miles up road, lying on its roof, abandoned. He can just make it out in the twilight.
Dennis takes a deep breath and looks back out at the horizon, to the place where the sun went down. It’s weird how the sun is still going about its business, rising and setting exactly like it’s always done. Come to think of it, it’s probably the only thing still acting normal, and that’s probably why Dennis has been sitting here for the past hour, just watching the sun dip slowly in the sky. He feels comforted just looking at it.
Footsteps from the stairs. The door creaks open behind him.
“Dennis?”
He turns his head to look at Mom standing in the doorway. She’s wearing her nightgown, her hair pulled up in a knot.
“It’s late. We should go to bed.”
“I know, Mom. I just … want to sit here a little longer. Is that okay?”
He asks the question without really thinking about it; it’s old habit, really, asking Mom permission for even the smallest things.
Yet something in Dennis’s voice reveals that he isn’t really asking. Mom can hear it too; Dennis can tell from her face.
“What are you doing up here, anyway?” she asks.
“I’m just …” Dennis shrugs, then realizes Mom is looking at the gris-gris. “Praying,” he finishes.
Mom raises her eyebrows. “Oh. When did you begin doing that?”
“When everything changed, I guess.”
Mom nods slowly. “Good. I’m glad.” She breathes deeply. “Well, try not to stay up too late. We’ve got work to do tomorrow. I need you well rested.”
“Sure, Mom,” Dennis says, thinking to himself that Mom has no idea what kind of work they might be doing tomorrow. “I’ll come down as soon as I’m done praying.”
This time, when he uses the word, it sounds a lot more like a lie. Like he’s telling Mom something she wants to hear to avoid telling the truth.
Dennis has never taken to Mom’s beliefs. It’s obviously very important to Mom, but for some reason she has never tried to push it on Dennis. Dennis always assumed she wanted him to find the interest himself when he was ready, but at the same time, he often gets the feeling that Mom is somehow private about it. Not that she’s keeping anything secret from him or hiding the rituals or prayers, but there’s a subtle sense of her wanting not to share it with him, almost like she’s protecting him from something. Like it’s a bad habit she doesn’t want him to catch.
“Mom?” Dennis says, just as she’s about to close the door.
She looks in at him. “Yes, Dennis?”
“You don’t need to look out for me anymore. I can take care of myself now. Actually, I can take care of both of us.”
Mom eyes him for a moment, then glances at the gun in the window, then back at Dennis. “Okay,” she simply says. There’s no good or bad in her tone. No concern and no encouragement.
Then she closes the door and leaves Dennis to himself.
Dennis looks down at his bag. The satellite phone is in there. He’s kept it with him all day, waiting for it to ring. Mom probably hasn’t noticed it missing from the dock down in the bunker.
It hasn’t rung, though.
And now it’s almost midnight.
The guy—Dan—told Dennis they would be here today. Maybe he lied. Maybe it was all one big prank.
But Dennis doesn’t think so. Dan sounded very honest.
“You need to trust me,” he said, and something in his voice made Dennis believe him.
But maybe he was wrong. Maybe the guy was a very good actor. Dennis is no stranger to being pranked and bullied. He’s well aware of how mean people can be.
Dennis glances at his watch. It’s eleven forty-five now. Only fifteen minutes left of the day. Fifteen minutes for the guy to keep his promise.
And then he sees it. A few miles up road, close to where the truck is. Another car comes this way.
It could be anybody, of course, but it’s the first car Dennis has seen all night.
It stops next to the flipped-over truck. Dennis squints. He can see someone getting out. The person just stands there, next to the car.
Then there’s a ringing from the bag.
Dennis jumps and grabs for it, fumbling out the satellite phone. He stares at the display, recognizing the number from yesterday.
He answers the call, his heart in his throat, barely able to gulp out: “’ello?”
“Dennis?”
Dan’s voice.
Dennis nods. “Yes. It’s me.”
“Good. I’m glad you’re still up. I’m almost at Holger’s place now.”
I know, Dennis thinks. I can see you.
But for some reason he doesn’t want Dan to know. “All right,” he says in a neutral tone.
“We still have an agreement?” Dan asks. “I’ll come unarmed, and you’ll let me in through the underground entrance?”
“Sure,” Dennis says.
“And what about your mom?”
“What about her?”
“Have you told her I’m coming?”
Dennis is about to answer, when the door on the passenger side of the car suddenly opens, and a person steps out. It’s a girl, blonde hair and blue shirt. Dennis just stares at her for several seconds.
“Dennis? You still there?”
Dennis blinks. Then nods. Then he says: “Yes.”
“Have you told your mom about me?”
“No.”
“Good. So everything is ready for me to come?”
“I guess so.”
“Right. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
“Okay. Oh, one last thing.”
“Uh-huh?”
“You’re coming alone, right?” Dennis stares intently at the girl as he asks the questions. “It’ll just be you? No one else?”
Dan hesitates for half a second. Dennis can see him looking over at the girl. Then he says: “Sure. It’s just me.”
Dennis feels his stomach drop. He manages to squeeze out an “Okay.”
“I’ll see you in a bit, Dennis.”
Dan disconnects.
Dennis doesn’t lower the phone. He just stares at the girl and the guy, talking briefly before getting back inside the car.
Who else is in that car? How many people is Dan bringing? Why was he lying? What is his plan?
That last question seems like the easiest to answer.
Dan wants the safe house back. That’s been his plan all along. All of that stuff with curing the deads—that must have been just talk.
As the car gets moving, Dennis finally puts down the phone.
Instead, he picks up the gun. He turns it over slowly in his hands, looking at it, admiring the small details.
Dennis breathes deeply, feeling surprisingly calm.
He has fired the gun before, but never at anyone living.
He has a strong feeling that that is about to change.
THIRTY-TWO
It’s close to midnight. The clock on his phone tells him so. His palms are sore from drumming the steering wheel.
When he was a kid, he wanted badly to be a drummer in a heavy metal band, like Lars Ulrich from Metallica. If one Dane could make it big in the States, why not two?
He spent many hours practicing and he even put together a band that lasted for a few months. They had a couple of gigs in small places before they began arguing constantly over their creative differences, and finally broke up.
That was when William decided he needed to fly solo instead. And being a rock drummer wasn’t the way he would achieve success; instead, he’d become famous as a tattoo artist in LA.
He watched every episode of Ink Masters again and again, studied the craft and practiced drawing whenever he had a spare moment.
But he never got to America.
He needed more money before he could make it happen. And post Nine-Eleven, green cards weren’t exactly easy to come by.
William blinks and comes to. He stops drumming the wheel and looks at his hands. They’re red and swollen.
None of it matters anymore.
He isn’t going to be a drummer or a tattoo artist.
His fate has been sealed.
From the backseat, Ozzy is breathing and whimpering now and then. The dead guy with the neck tattoo is still hanging from the broken passenger door window, effectively serving as a stopper for the rest of the undeads, still trying tirelessly to squish themselves past but so far, no luck.
It’s just a matter of time, though.
Sooner or later, the dead guy in the window will tilt backwards or be pushed all the way through, and it’ll be open season for the rest of them.
“Who’d have thought we’d end like this?” William asks, hardly aware he’s talking aloud.
In the rearview mirror, he sees the German shepherd raise his ears and look at him.
Ever since watching his first zombie movie, William has played with the thought of the dead arising and taking over the world. He’s even come up with specific plans for how he would deal with it if it happened.
And it did.
His first move was to contact Holger and get to his safe house.
Holger is dead now, and William will soon follow him.
So much for that plan.
Yet William had always imagined he would be one of the guys making it to the end. He would survive the apocalypse. He was clever, he was young and healthy. He would take the situation seriously and not fall prey to any of the cliches: trusting someone who can’t be trusted, trying to save someone who is already infected, going into situations that are obviously death traps.
And now, as he thinks back on the last week, he realizes he’s made all of those mistakes and then some.
He left the safe house. He let himself be talked into trusting Eli. And the most recent one: he rushed to get the car without making proper precautions.
This last one turned out to be the one sealing his fate.
And now he can only wait to die.
He reaches a hand back to pet Ozzy, and the dog licks his palm in return. “Sorry I got us into this mess, buddy. I’m a total screw-up.”
The area under the steering wheel is a chaos of wires hanging out. William spent almost twenty minutes breaking it open and even longer meddling with the wires until he finally gave up.
Hot-wiring a car engine sure isn’t as easy as eighties action moves make it look.
William had no idea what he was doing, and his phone didn’t have any internet connection, so he couldn’t Google it. Also, he wanted to save that last nine percentage of the battery.
Running his tongue across his teeth, he can feel all too well how long it’s been since they last met a toothbrush. The sweet taste of the Oreos he found in the glove box earlier still lingers in his mouth, and he regrets eating them now. Not only because of the nauseating aftertaste, but also because they gave him calories enough to last another day.
With all of the water the woman brought, it is obvious that she wasn’t planning on coming back anytime soon; William found at least six large bottles of tap water in the trunk, next to a suitcase crammed full of women’s clothes.
He went through it in the hopes of finding the keys for the car, checked it thoroughly.
Nothing.
As he climbed back onto the front seat, he made sure not to look down at the woman or her open skull. The stench was bad enough on its own; he didn’t need to see her as well.
He dozed off earlier, when the sun went down and the temperature began to drop as well. But he only slept for twenty minutes at a time, waking again and again at the sound of the zombies, plagued by half-dreams that the woman in the back turned out to be not really dead but still able to get up and attack him.
“It’s gonna be a long night,” William tells Ozzy. “And another long day tomorrow.”
Sharing the water with Ozzy, they’ll have enough to last several days.
William doesn’t want to hang around for that long, though. And his subconscious has already begun playing with dark thoughts. Thoughts of alternative endings. He still has other options than dying slowly from thirst, trapped in a car surrounded by zombies.
He could simply open the door.
It would be painful, but quick.
He couldn’t do that to Ozzy, though. Letting the dog see him getting eaten alive.
There was also the more offensive option of going out swinging. He could bring the rifle and just begin shooting. He could probably take at least a handful with him before they got him. The end result would be the same as the first scenario, though.
Then there was the last option.
The one he thought of as he went through the woman’s suitcase earlier. She had packed a carton full of cigarettes. The woman had obviously been a heavy smoker; if packing your essentials for going away forever included cigarettes, you obviously had a habit.
This also meant the woman must have had a lighter somewhere. William didn’t find it in the suitcase, which was probably a wise call by the woman, not putting something able to produce fire in with your last belongings.
Instead, she probably kept it in her pocket.
William could get it. All he needs to do is reach back and grope for it.
But he really doesn’t want to touch her. The thought scares the living hell out of him. It’s like touching her means running the risk of her waking up. It is absurd, of course. But his brain is already growing paranoid.
If he got the lighter, though, he could end things quickly and painlessly. He could light a fire inside the car, suffocating himself and Ozzy within minutes, putting them both gently to sleep.
Or, he could try and reach the gas tank. If he could get to it and light the fire there, it would all be over in a blink of an eye. Plus the added advantage of taking a dozen or so of the dead folks with him.
That might be his favorite choice.
He glances at his phone on the seat next to him.
Seven percentage left now.
Just enough for one last call.
He has been close to calling his mom several times, but what holds him back is that he has no idea what to say.
Should he pretend everything is fine? Should he just tell her he called to check in on her? Or should he be honest and break the bad news to her?
He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t listen to his mom’s voice without breaking into tears. He didn’t want that to the last time she heard him speak.
So, he decided on a text message. Cheesy, maybe, but also a lot easier. Also, surprisingly easy to write. He typed it in earlier. Two short sentences.
Love you Mom. Take care of yourself.
It was on his phone right now, as a draft, waiting for him to hit send. He will do it right before the end. Making sure she doesn’t have time to call him once she reads the text.
William takes a deep breath. “So, buddy, what do you say? You want to wait until tomorrow? Or should we do it now? Get it over with while we still have the guts to do it?”
Ozzy eyes him intently in the mirror, trying to understand the words.
